1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a needle park for securing needles, and, more particularly, to a needle park for a package that holds one or more surgical needles and sutures.
2. Description of the Related Art
Packages for surgical needles and sutures must, among other things, securely anchor the needles, yet permit them to be easily removed when they are to be used. A simple holder device (i.e., needle park) for accomplishing that consists of a foam strip adhered to the base of the package. The needle either pierces the foam or is inserted into a slit cut into the foam. A disadvantage of the foam strip is that it is a separate element from the rest of the package and must be adhered to the base of the package, requiring an additional operation during package manufacture.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,699,271, issued Oct. 13, 1987, to Lincoln et al. discloses alternate needle parks that hold needles in plastic clips or in pairs of slots cut into parallel walls.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,961,498, issued Oct. 9, 1990, to Kalinski et al. discloses an alternate needle park comprising a molded post and adjacent molded rail, which may both be formed on the floor of a suture package. The post and rail are separated by a distance that is slightly smaller than the diameter of a needle to be held. When the needle is placed between the post and rail, the rail flexes slightly, and the needle is held in place by contact on either side of the needle with the post and the rail. This design is limited to holding needles of a single diameter.
A somewhat similar needle park, which can hold a narrow range of needle diameters, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,424,898. A needle park adapted to hold needles having a broad range of diameters, also disclosed in that patent, consists of a raised platform that has two string-like lengths arrayed parallel to each other, with their ends affixed to the platform. The strings have notched undersides and the platform is open below the strings. Needles are parked by insertion on top of the platform and under the strings. The notches on the strings prevent the needles from sliding along the length of the strings. This type of park can retain needles having a range of diameters; however, it depends on the flexibility of the strings and is not as simple or inexpensive to manufacture as are other needle parks.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,902, issued Nov. 6, 1990 to Sobel et al. discloses another type of needle park, comprising a wall that extends upward from the base of a needle package and that is interrupted by a gap into which the needle may be inserted. That type of park can only hold a needle whose diameter is substantially the same as the width of the gap between the wall ends. To increase the range of needle diameters that can be held, the wall ends can be undercut near the base and the base beneath the gap can be removed, which permits the wall ends to flex and bend, thereby accommodating a somewhat wider range of needle diameters. The range of needle diameters that can be held securely is limited, however.
A drawback that these earlier needle parks all have in common to a greater or lesser degree is that they are not adapted for one-piece manufacture and/or are not well adapted to simple, automated loading of a needle in the park. Instead, they generally require a separate needle park element that must be mounted into the package, or rather careful and precise needle placement, or both. Thus, if loading the needles into the packages is included as a manufacturing step, all the prior art needle parks suffer from certain manufacturing drawbacks.